McBride plays the generation game

MUSIC marketing guru Terry McBride outlined some innovative techniques to help sell an album in yesterday’s session Marketing Artists To The Millennial Generation.

In July 2008, the CEO of Nettwerk Music Group was commissioned by MusicTank to write a report on marketing music to the millennial generation. He was then challenged to put his ideas into practice by roadmapping on stage the next year of up-and-coming artist James Yuill’s career. Six months on, Yuill’s manager Amul Batra joined McBride at MIDEM to explain how his client’s career had fared since.

While Yuill had a traditional release plan, there had been no creative plan, said Batra. But McBride came up with over 100 out-of-the-box ideas, he said. As well as creating a Flicker account and a blog, McBride focused on attempting to get fans to contribute to the release. His efforts helped increase Yuill’s MySpace friends by 70% with one of those friends contributing sleeve artwork.

Encouraged by McBride’s thinking, when Yuill’s laptop was stolen, the artist even launched a website entitled Where’smy ******* laptop. com. And emboldened by the experience of McBride’s client Avril Lavigne, whose sales rocketed when she released a single in different languages, plans to release an album in French.

“It’s all about being authentic,” said McBride. “So in the case of Avril, we released the single in eight different languages simply because she is a worldwide artist. Making that effort had an enormous impact and that single sold 19 million.”

Understanding the artist’s unique interests and character is also paramount, said McBride. “That’s the emotional glue that really turns the listener to the music,” he said. “It’s also about understanding who your tribe is, building a relationship with that tribe and turning it into your record label.”

About Author

James Martin is Head of Social Media for Midem organisers Reed MIDEM. This includes defining and rolling out Midem's social media strategy, editing midemblog, influencer outreach, developing Midem's fanbase of 75,000+ music professionals and more.

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